The Book of the Heathen (25 page)

Without warning, he drew out his pistol and fired at a passing branch upon which sat a solitary bird. The shot missed, and the branch and bird were soon out of range.

‘Have you been present at his questioning?' I asked him.

‘Guarding him, you mean? I offered, but he said he needed no guard. Heard most of it, though. He couldn't keep me from sitting outside, not in the garrison. He said he might take Frere back to the compound with him, but I soon put him right on that one. Said he had authorization, but didn't have it with him. I told him the only “authorization” I needed to see was the letter telling him to send Frere down to the coast to be hanged.'

‘What did he say to that?' I did my best not to sound too interested, but he saw through this.

‘Wouldn't you like to know,' he said.

I offered him my tobacco pouch and he took a handful from it and stuffed it in his pocket.

‘You seem convinced it's what's going to happen,' I said.

‘Not really. Put it another way – you're the only one left with half an idea it
won't
happen.' He laughed at his cleverness, but whereas in the past he might have continued to play to this small advantage, he said nothing more and turned back to look out over the river. If it had been anyone other than Bone, I would have described his mood as contemplative.

‘He told me he knew I'd taken money,' he said.

‘From me?'

‘From anybody I could get it from. He said I'd “misappropriated” supplies, whatever that means, and that I'd neglected my duties here.'

‘He's swinging his stick at all of us,' I said.

‘He had my bloody contract with him. “Three months, Sergeant Bone, three months.” He wanted to know what kind of real work I considered myself capable of.' He fired his pistol again, but this time only at the passing water.

‘Will you go back to the coast? Home?'

He shrugged, unwilling even to consider all he was about to lose.

‘And in the middle of all this there's him and Frere like a pair of bloody lords sitting together in their club.'

‘Oh?'

‘You'd think he'd come out here to pin a medal on the man instead of fit him up for a rope.'

‘They're both educated, civilized men,' I said coldly, hoping to suggest some sympathy for his position, some false alliance between us.

‘Aren't we all?' he said. ‘Not educated, but civilized. We're all civilized.' He turned to me for the first time. ‘You must feel a bit left out of it, you and Frere being such friends, and all.'

‘Not really.'

He laughed. ‘“Not really.” Who are you fooling? You'd pay a shilling a word to know what passed between them.'

‘Once, perhaps.'

‘No – now. Don't worry. It won't cost you that much.'

‘I imagine Nash must find it hard work,' I said.

‘Nothing of the sort. Every question he asks, Frere answers. The pair of them are at it for hours on end.'

‘Questions about what?'

‘About everything, about all this, this place, about you lot, about me.' He slapped himself on the chest.

‘And Frere answers him willingly?'

‘Tells him everything. Can't tell him enough. What you think, reckon he's seen a chance to save himself?'

I doubted this. That would amount to salvation – something it was beyond Nash to offer, and even further beyond Frere to accept.

‘Spent all the first morning talking about that useless hole in the ground, what happened there. Then about the wharves, about trade there, about the rubber, about them across the river.'

‘But nothing about Frere leaving us?'

‘Oh, all that came later. Where he went, why he went, what he saw, what he did.' He stopped abruptly.

‘And did you overhear all that, too?'

He considered this for a moment before shaking his head. ‘It's where Nash left off. He's not stupid. He wants everything else first before Frere finally tells him and then falls dumb on him.'

I saw the sense in what he suggested.

‘So you think he's building up to asking him what he did?'

‘About the girl he killed.'

‘Is
alleged
to have killed.'

‘Still can't bring yourself to even think it of him, can you? You'd believe it of me, but not him. And what if it was more than killing her he had a hand in, what then, what else wouldn't you force yourself to face up to?'

I remained silent. He, too, said nothing for several minutes.

A steamer passed us going upriver, its stern paddle working hard against the current, churning up a spray of dirty water and making hardly any progress. Men at the prow fended off the larger pieces of floating vegetation with poles. I saw the master standing in the wheel-house, his face fixed ahead of him. It was a foolish journey to attempt so soon after the rain.

‘He's going nowhere fast,' Bone said, taking pleasure in the vessel's struggle. He aimed his pistol at the man and said, ‘Bang.'

‘Do you imagine Nash is aware that you can overhear him with Frere?' I said.

‘He knows everything else. He doesn't strike me as a man who ever left anything to chance in his life.'

So, presumably, he knew that Bone would in turn repeat what he had heard.

‘Must worry you,' he said.

‘What must?'

‘Knowing that when the time comes, Frere's going to talk about what he did in exactly the same way he's been talking about everything here.'

‘If you say so.'

‘If I say so. Face it – he's desperate for it, aching to tell Nash everything that happened.'

‘So why should
I
find that worrying?'

‘Because he's ready and willing to do it for Nash and he never would for you, his so-called friend. He'll tell the man with the rope, but not the man who might have helped him away from it all.'

‘You overestimate my powers.'

‘I know. But don't lie and tell me it isn't what you once thought you'd do. You think he keeps it all separate, all away from us by telling that stuffed shirt and not the rest of us?'

‘I imagine it's what Frere wants, what he believes, and that he has his reasons for doing it.' It was a weightless answer.

‘Then he's wrong. This is all going to come crashing down whatever Nash gets to hear or not hear. Frere's going to tell him everything and then get handed over to the clever niggers and they're going to hang him. He'll be theirs, a present from us to them, something to let them know we think they'll be as good at running the place as we were. We all know different, but that's not going to be said, is it? A million of them for every one of us.' He looked into his dirt-encrusted palm as though every part of this simple understanding lay revealed to him there. ‘Nash is just here to wrap him up and hand him over,' he said.

The boat at the centre of the river abandoned its struggle and turned in an awkward curve towards the far shore. The current on our side bit into the bank and scoured it away. The slanting piles of our damaged jetty had been lost several days ago. Traders were beginning to complain that others among our moorings were unsafe.

‘Fletcher tell you about our attack?' Bone said.

‘Attack?'

‘One of my men. Clayton. Shot in the bloody head. Arrow. Nigger sitting up a tree. Fired straight down at him.' He pressed a finger down the side of his face and into his neck.

‘Where? Why?'

‘About half a mile inland. Been to see some woman or other. Never heard a thing. Just shot from above. Inch to one side and it would have been through his skull. As it is, he's going to have a six-inch scar and mumble his words for the rest of his life. Fletcher not tell you?'

‘I haven't seen him recently,' I lied.

‘Happened two days ago. Perhaps he doesn't think it's important, not with everything else that's going on.'

I wondered if he was going to make more of this, but he seemed unconcerned by the event.

‘Do you know why he was attacked?'

‘Who knows. Most of their crops have gone. Perhaps they're just getting brave, perhaps that's it.'

‘I didn't realize anyone hereabouts was hostile towards us.'

‘One day they aren't, next day they are.'

‘Perhaps Clayton did something to upset whoever attacked him.'

‘I wouldn't put it past him. He's one for the women. And he's not choosy.' He grinned at the suggestion.

‘Was anything done to try and apprehend the man responsible?'

‘What's the point? He was long gone by the time Clayton got back to us with his face all cut up and the arrow still sticking in his neck. This long.' He stretched his thumb and forefinger to indicate the dart.

‘Do you still have it?' I asked him.

‘Clayton does. Why?'

‘Frere might be able to identify it.'

‘Him? What good is he to any of us now? Forget it. The next nigger Clayton sees and there's nobody looking, he'll be the one who fired it.'

‘That would be unadvisable,' I said.

He turned and laughed at me in disbelief.

‘I mean it,' I said.

‘So what?' He looked away to watch the distant boat approach the far shore. A large number of other vessels had already gathered there. A small white cloud hung above a boat off-loading crushed talcum.

Finally, Bone rose from where he sat.

‘Anything you want me to pass on to Frere?' he said.

I shook my head.

‘Thought not. Not much left for any of us to say to him, is there? Suppose he might as well get used to that.'

He left me, whistling loudly as he went from the open ground into the trees. He still held his pistol, and now he pointed it ahead of him as he walked.

Beneath me, the river undermined an overhang, and I watched as a length of the bank was cut away, roots and soil falling into the current, darkening it briefly, and obscuring even further the restless boundary between the earth and the water.

*   *   *

I finally went to see Frere. I waited until mid-afternoon, knowing that Nash, if he too had been to the gaol, would have finished his questioning by then.

I was surprised to see Frere outside, at the centre of the garrison yard with Bone. The two men stood close in conversation. Frere was the first to see me, over Bone's shoulder, but he made no acknowledgement; instead, he pulled Bone closer to him and continued talking, and only as I approached to within a few feet of them did Bone finally turn to face me. He leaned closer to Frere's ear and whispered something to him, at which Frere nodded in agreement. Frere then took out a handful of coins and tipped these into the pocket Bone held open for him. Seeing this transaction, and the hurried exchange which preceded it, there was no doubt in my mind that my arrival was welcomed by neither man.

After pocketing the money, Bone made a great play of holding out his hand to Frere and shaking Frere's own for longer than was necessary. The energy was all Bone's.

Following this, he held out his other, disfigured hand to me, as though I too played some unknowing part in their conspiracy, but as I raised my own hand, more in surprise than with intent, Bone laughed and took back his own. He considered me for a moment and then walked away. Several of his men, the wounded Clayton among them, sat in the garrison doorway.

‘Were you paying him for news?' I asked Frere, giving him his answer, and avoiding any embarrassment between us when he refused to tell me more directly what he had paid for.

‘For what he tells me. I don't work too hard to separate the “news” from the rumours and sundry tale-telling. It helps me to stand a little more steadily at the calm centre of things and imagine I still have some control over what's happening.'

‘He's selling it in both directions,' I said.

‘I know. I think you underestimate our Sergeant, James.'

‘Oh?'

‘Truly. I envy him the simple, straightforward way he has of looking at things.' He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

‘He considers himself first and foremost, and anyone else hardly ever,' I said.

‘Precisely. You and I, James, we step back to take in the whole canvas; Bone, however, goes directly to the small, poorly painted figure in the bottom corner, sees himself, and disregards everything else.'

‘I don't see how that could be thought of as enviable.'

He walked ahead of me. We resumed unheard at the centre of the space. The voices of Bone and his men came to us distorted through the heat.

‘You know, of course, that Nash has been to see me and started his work.'

‘We all—'

‘And that it is his policy to start from a distance and circle me in ever-decreasing circles, that he resists all my attempts to draw him into me more quickly.'

‘Is that what you want?'

‘Not necessarily. I merely object to having to comply to his own timetable, to make everything fit so neatly into his own plan of events.' He smiled. ‘Almost as though his report were already written and I were merely adding my initials to each printed page.'

‘So you still see that broader picture, then?'

‘I saw it the instant I came round and saw Hammad's men staring down at me and felt my hands and feet tied.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘Did Bone tell you about Nash closing the quarry?'

‘I imagine Abbot will soon find some new purpose in life.'

I told him about the understanding which now seemed to exist between the two men.

Afterwards, when he had made his own assessment of what was happening at the quarry, he said, ‘Nash has a great deal more to do here than prepare me for dispatch to the coast.'

A month ago, a week even, I might have felt an impulse to deny what he said, but standing with him there, I said nothing, and this appeared to relax him, knowing that I had begun to accept the unacceptable.